NASA announces rocket design, 2017 flight

NASA has finally announced its plans for a heavy-lift rocket that will have the capability to fly humans and cargo beyond low-Earth orbit.

The space agency plans to build and fly the rocket within six years for about $18 billion.

That includes $10 billion for the rocket, $6 billion for the Orion capsule and $2 billion for the launch site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This new launch system will appear similar to an Apollo-era capsule atop the tallest of three giant boosters, much in configuration like the external tank and two boosters that the shuttle rode into space.

Artist concept of SLS launching. (NASA)

But the new space launch system will be much bigger and far more powerful. It will be able, initially, to lift as much as 140,000 pounds of cargo into space, nearly three times as much as the space shuttle, which had a capacity for about 50,000 pounds.

This is enough to lift space capsules, astronauts and the supplies they will need for voyages to the moon and possibly beyond.

The announcement comes after weeks of wrangling between the U.S. Senate and NASA and the White House. In the end the Senate seems to have gotten what it wanted, an affordable heavy lift system ready to fly by 2017.

This elephant in the room, however, is whether NASA can actually deliver the launch system on time and on budget.

There are concerns that the cost estimates above are too rosy for the space agency to meet, and that the ambitious program to develop a new rocket and space capsule will be underfunded.

I have an in-person interview with Norm Augustine this afternoon, who led the committee that warned the White House and Congress not to ask NASA to do too much with too little, and will update after I speak with him.